


In The Blink of A Thunderbird

by AntigravityDevice



Category: Jurassic Park III (2001)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntigravityDevice/pseuds/AntigravityDevice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy Brennan discovers that what can wound can also heal you. Alan Grant discovers thunderbirds in Arizona.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Blink of A Thunderbird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rachael Sabotini (wickedwords)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedwords/gifts).



> I want to apologise in advance to any Arizonians in the audience. My knowledge of the region is entirely Internet-based, and probably slapdash. I hope it doesn't offend you that I stuck an azhdarchid pterosaur in your neighbourhood. The same goes for all the paleontologists; if you could swallow the mosquito cloning in the films, I'm hoping you can forgive whatever errors I've made, too.
> 
> This is more pre-slash than slash, really, but there's a sequel already living in my brain. Actually, this should've been a much longer fic and probably reads rushed, but perhaps I can fix that by adding to it later...
> 
> Okay, I'll shut up now.

From cold and wet mountains to hot and dry desert was a short trip for a sardine can. Alan tried to focus on the few Journal of Paleontology issues he'd managed to grab during his two-minute packing operation, but the reason they had been the first at hand was that he had already dog-eared them to hell and back. He leaned back in his seat and tried to force his mind on reassuringly dusty clinical data instead of its preferred route, which consisted of increasingly fantastic ways the plane could lose its passengers. He didn't need much of an imagination, not with his personal flying history.

He was only mildly relieved when they touched ground again, sailing between abject boredom and sudden confusion. The Sky Harbor Airport was a new one to him, and for a while, he wandered around, trying to make sense of it, and hoping to spot a car rental sign somewhere. It struck him that Ellie had sent him some numbers, and fiddled with his cell phone, cursing its tiny complexity. The sudden ring tone bursting out of it made him step back and on an old lady's shoe, which he apologized for while trying to figure out how to answer the damn thing. It seemed to him they only got smaller and more impossible to handle.

"Hello? Dr. Grant?" his phone demanded, but in a voice he hadn't heard in a long while.

"Mr. Brennan. Billy. Hello," Alan said, moving away from the crowd to somewhere more secluded. He was generally annoyed with the way some people seemed to enjoy sharing their personal calls with everyone around them. "How's... how's Australia?"

"Probably asleep right now." He sounded as cheery as ever. Obviously Australia wasn't treating him badly. "Listen, I called around, and they said you'd just left the dig this morning. So I figured you might actually have your cell on, and..."

It seemed impossible to find a place where he could talk in peace. Alan walked along, phone in one hand and his backpack in the other. "I'm not in Montana, Billy, I'm -- Hold on."

He spotted a reasonably quiet-looking corner near the café, so he paid the ridiculous price for a cup of watery monstrosity and started to make his way through the people sitting in a clutch around their watering hole.

His phone was prattling away in his hand. "...know, I called Dr. Sattler, and she said you were..."

Strangely enough, Alan could now hear this prattle in stereo. He stopped dead in his tracks as he recognized the familiar curly head, and then it turned, and Billy grinned at him, lowering his phone.

"She said you were in Arizona, too. Something about a lecture in Tucson?"

Complete sentences just wouldn't form in Alan's mind. He fumbled his cell phone off and put it back into the side pocket. "I thought you weren't supposed to be back --"

"I know." Billy sniffed a little, moved restlessly in his chair. He wasn't built for sitting languidly in cafés. "But I needed consultation for my diss, and there's only so much sun and jellyfish I can take, y'know?"

Alan couldn't help protesting. "Your thesis."

Billy shrugged, and got up onto his feet, seeming glad to have the excuse to do so. "You can't take the dig out of the man, right, Dr. Grant?"

Dammit. Alan couldn't very well argue against his own arguments. "I would've thought you'd come to your senses by now. Switched majors at least."

"You really thought so?" Billy cocked his head to the side, and his mouth twisted into a tiny pout.

The moment stretched for uncomfortably long as Alan had no idea how to give an answer that wasn't blatantly obvious. _Yes, I thought being pecked half to death by the subjects of your studies would have been a completely understandable reason._ But there wasn't anything about Billy now that suggested that had happened. Perhaps a tiny scar here and there, but you had to know they were there. He seemed tanned, not Montana-tanned but sand-and-jellyfish-tanned, and wore far cleaner clothes than the ones he'd worn at the dig. He looked ready to major in skydiving and sunning, not digging for fossilized remains.

"We're dropping like flies. I was just making a logical assumption," Alan managed, more gruffly than he intended.

Billy raised his eyebrows, adjusting the backpack he'd thrown over his shoulder. That should've provided a clue: sensible paleontologist's gear. Now that Alan came to think of looking, he saw Billy wore good all-weather shoes as well. "I'm not ready to drop quite yet. Anyway, uh... I was wondering if I could ask you a favor."

It was Alan's turn to raise his eyebrows.

"My sister was supposed to pick me up," Billy said, gesturing with his hands, sounding a little sheepish. "But she can be such a ditz. She mixed up the dates, and she's stuck in New York for another day, so." Billy's hand flew to the back of his head, not scratching, but still a sign of nervousness. "Dr. Sattler said you wouldn't mind the company."

Ellie said. Of course Ellie said. Making Alan more sociable had been her on-going project for a decade; why should she stop now? "It's just a drive to Holbrook and back again. I'll probably be in Tucson before lunch."

"No you won't," Billy said easily. It seemed the backpack was all he had with him; hadn't he worn clothes in Australia? "Kira lives in Phoenix. Trust me, I've driven around here before."

Billy was trying to convince him, and Alan let him go on doing it even if there was really no need, quietly enjoying the puppy-dog enthusiasm. He had missed it. It seemed to come so naturally to Billy that he didn't even bother hiding it.

"Hmph. It's a couple of hours' drive, then. You better not be brimming with stories about beach parties."

Billy's eyes lighted up and he stood up a little straighter. "My lips are sealed."

Alan kept Billy in suspense for a moment more, putting his hands on his hips and glancing around, as if considering it. He had given some thought to what he might say to Billy when he came back to the States, but so far, it hadn't gone at all as he had expected. He had anticipated heavy silences, and painful memories bubbling under every word, or perhaps a Billy he no longer recognised, someone who had moved on. He had been prepared, or at least a small part of him had, to never see Billy again, certainly not on the dig. But he seemed ready to pick up the brush and get to dusting some duckbills, as if he hadn't seen those bones being snapped by a hungry T-Rex, as if Isla Sorna had never happened. It wasn't something he had expected, and it occurred to him he had no plan for dealing with this Billy.

"Well, we need a rental for a start."

Billy jumped to his task with boundless energy. Apparently jetlag was something that happened to other people. He kept grinning; apparently happy to be back, happy even to have Dr. Grant boss him around. Maybe life down under hadn't been so rosy after all.

 

***

The drive was uneventful, and the traffic slowed down infuriatingly at times. Alan turned on the radio, aware of just how badly the empty dirt-roads to the dig had spoiled him. Billy kept to his word, and didn't distract him too much, only offered a couple of insightful comments about Ellie's articles on Mesozoic environments she had published with some Chinese biologists Alan didn't recognize. She had been there for close to two months now, and was probably churning out one article after another partly because she was missing her kids. She'd always been so family-oriented. It was part of why she had said family with Mark and not him. Not the only reason, but one of the main ones, for Alan at least.

The radio said something about thunder, and he turned the volume up, wondering what storms looked like in Arizona.

"...Mr. Elmore said he had lived in Sedona all his life, and had never seen the like..."

"I hope the flights won't be delayed," Alan said, but was cut short when Billy raised his hand and leaned in to listen to the radio.

"...back in 1977 when an unknown creature in Lawndale, Illinois snatched a young boy with its claws and carried him through the air. The other two children escaped without injury..."

Alan looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. The traffic was still crawling along. He felt like stepping on the gas and letting the engine drown out the radio, but there was no escape.

"...numerous photographs, but the elusive birds of legend have never been captured..."

"He just said it, 'legends'," Billy muttered, leaning back. He looked somewhere past the windshield, the car in front of them, the road. "Thunderbirds were supposed to blink lightning. Wouldn't that be a scream to capture."

"Maybe they could build it a nice cage in San Diego," Alan said, and immediately regretted it.

Billy looked out of the window, his reaction oddly subdued. "Put InGen on the job, and they'd probably build it all out of metal, too."

"Feed it stolen batteries."

"Send a team into the cage to do it."

They glanced at each other, and shared a smirk. Relief splashed in Alan's chest, and he was about to say something in equally light vein, when a dark shadow passed over Billy, taking Alan completely by surprise. No, not just Billy; a shadow seemed to pass over the entire car. Instinctively, he glanced out, and rolled the window open to see better.

"What was that?"

Billy had his nose glued to the windshield. "We're not the only ones who saw it."

He was right. The car in front of them had veered to the roadside, and the driver was slowly climbing out, head tilted back, his mouth hanging open. There where others; Alan could see hands pointing out of windows. At what?

The sky looked ordinary to him, spattered with a few clouds but mostly summer blue. "Can you see anything?"

Billy made a frustrated noise. "Just clouds. That wasn't a cloud, though. I'm sure of it."

For a while they peered up in vain, then Alan had to admit defeat and roll the window closed. Billy seemed disappointed, and Alan found himself thinking about Dilophosaurs, although he couldn't quite grasp why. But the traffic was starting to move again, at least.

After a quiet moment had passed, Billy spoke up in a light tone. "Could murder a burger."

"It won't be long to Flagstaff," Alan said, happy to change the subject, although the unsolved mystery gnawed at him, and he was sure Billy hadn't completely set it aside, either. He knew what they were both thinking.

_God help us all if they ever learn to blink lightning._

 

***

Picking up the files Ellie had forgotten in her Holbrook house didn't take long. The town wasn't that big, and Ellie's instructions were clear. Alan felt a momentary pang as he looked around the small but neat study; all he had been able to offer was half a trailer, and here Ellie had a summer house as near as dammit to Petrified Forest. It was water under the bridge, but it still stang his ego. At least Ellie hadn't rubbed it in by asking him to fax or e-mail the information to her.

He turned around to tell Billy that they should be on their way - his lecture didn't start for hours, but he liked to prepare, get the nausea and the nervousness over with - and saw him staring out of the big living-room window. Alan tucked the files into his backpack and joined him.

There was commotion on the street, he could see that right away. There was at least one cop, wildly gesturing "no" to a heavily sweating man stepping out of his parked car. A trailer was attached to it, with a tarpaulin thrown over it. Papers were pulled out, voices raised. It seemed a standard misunderstanding.

"Let's go," Alan said, touching Billy's shoulder as he turned away, but Billy grabbed his hand in a sudden vice.

"That shape, on the trailer."

Alan was about to say he saw no particular shape to it, but then the police officer tugged the tarpaulin aside, and the few spectators took a step closer. Alan peeled off his sunglasses and stared. He wasn't used to seeing bones so white, and _new_, but the shape Billy had been talking about was the crest of a pterosaur, with the rest of the bone structure piled haphazardly under the skull. There were also several stones and cardboard boxes around the sad pile of bones.

Before he knew it, he was moving, and Billy was already out of the door before he reached the hallway.

Billy ran straight through the gathered crowd, as if he saw nothing else but the skull. The argument between the driver and the officer was heating up, and although it took Alan a little bit longer to squeeze past the staring passers-by, no one stopped either of them, not even when Billy reached out to run his hand over the crest.

"Holy fuck, it's huge," he said, almost gasped. "Like a Corythosaurus!" He gave Alan a look over his shoulder, seeking affirmation.

It was certainly the most impressive skull of a pterosaur Alan had ever seen. The shape of the bill immediately made him think of a Pteranodon, but the crest was odd, a half-moon sitting on its head, full of little holes. Beyond its size and shape, though, Alan couldn't help registering the blinding whiteness of the bone; it didn't seem heavy at all, something about it screaming artifice.

"Hey!" The police officer had finally noticed, and was sauntering over, knit brow visible even through the huge sunglasses. "Stand back! That is stolen property!"

"It's a freakin' thunderbird skeleton, that's what it is," someone put in from the crowd, eliciting a chorus of agreeable noises.

"It's not a real skeleton of anything, people," the officer said in a reassuring tone, throwing the tarpaulin back over the pile of bones and gesturing Billy to step back. "It's a fake and it's stolen property, that's all. Let's keep moving."

Alan expected him to say "nothing to see here", but it never came.

Billy went to the driver, who was leafing through a pile of dusty papers, looking increasingly desperate. "Sir? Where did you get it? The skeleton in your trailer?"

"The guy said it's from de Chelly. I have the receipt here somewhere," he replied without looking up.

Alan grabbed Billy's arm and pulled him away before there could be more trouble. The police officer didn't look like he was in the mood to take any more hassle. It dawned on Alan why he was so keen to calm down the crowd and get them moving; there had been talks of thunderbirds on the radio. An alleged cryptid skeleton wasn't something the law enforcement wanted in their hands or in the hearsay.

Billy went along with him, but gave him a fierce look. "That wasn't a fake, Alan. And it wasn't a Pteranodon, or a cloud, or a freakin' thunderbird," he said in a low tone.

"The shadow we saw?" Alan replied, lowering his voice as well.

Billy nodded. He looked flushed, but whether it was with excitement or something else, Alan couldn't tell. "Grigorescu. The European guy. And, and two others, I can't remember their names. Did you read their article on the Hatzeg?"

Now Billy was speaking a foreign language. "On what?"

"Goddammit, Alan! Hatzegopteryx, get with the times!" Billy almost hissed, way too worked up over this for Alan's liking. He gestured wildly. "The biggest thing since Quetzalcoatlus, possibly bigger, and you didn't _read_ about it?!"

Alan couldn't close his mouth. This wasn't the easy-going Mr. Brennan he knew. He felt a growing need to growl back that he had been at the dig, and couldn't possibly follow each and every paleontological journal there, but this was a subject he wanted to tiptoe around: Billy and pterosaurs.

A sudden inhuman shriek saved him the trouble. They both instinctively ducked their heads down, then looked up at the bright sky. The blinding sun made them rely on their hearing for a few seconds, but Alan didn't need a visual after that. He recognized the sound of the beating of two huge leather wings, and the guttural shriek that seemed to physically crawl inside his ear. And then the sun was covered by a huge shape, sailing heavily over them. By God, it must've had a wingspan of thirty, forty feet, and it was so close he could almost feel it breathing. It had to be an adult male. Before the first screams had quieted down, it was already swiftly gaining altitude, flapping its wings with the kind of force that seemed to approach desperation. If a creature that huge crashed on the flat ground, it wouldn't get airborne again in a hurry.

He took a step back, instinctively, and bumped into Billy, who was staring up as well - but moving towards their car. Their eyes met, and he saw a glimpse of determination that only served to make him more nervous. With his next step, Billy was already half-running, his eyes never leaving the creature in the sky, and Alan scrambled after him.

"Hey!" he called after Billy, who only gestured him impatiently to follow. Before Alan knew what he was doing, he was fumbling for the keys in his pocket. It made some sense to follow the pterosaur - to find out where it was going, and if there were more, in order to assess how big of a crisis they were looking at here - but there was also survival instinct and old fear. He considered calling the police officer over and telling him to alert everything he could think of alerting, but that would most probably cause a mass panic right now.

He glanced at Billy, who was drumming the hood of the car, staring feverishly ahead, and made his choice. If Billy didn't let fear get in the way, dammit, he wouldn't either.

***

"It's heading towards the rocks, probably seeking higher ground." Billy sounded out of breath, and pointed at a road sign. He had hardly blinked since they left Holbrook. "There, where it says White House Ruins trail. Take a turn."

They had the road to themselves. This was more like the kind of driving Alan was used to, and he could focus on other things. "Why didn't you think it was a fake, Billy?"

"In the article, the guy who named the Hatzeg, he wrote that the reason it could grow so huge and still fly was that its bone structure was full of tiny holes, not hollow, just kind of like a sponge," Billy all but ranted, rolling open the window. He stuck his head out to see better, then ducked back inside, hair tousled. "It's flying steady now, keeping its course. He said it would resemble polystyrene. Dammit, Alan, how did they get their hands on _that_? It fucking comes from the land of Count Dracula!"

"Take a deep breath," Alan barked, and apparently it worked, because Billy stopped, swallowing a few times, seeming aware that he was starting to sound borderline hysterical now. "Okay. InGen used samples from all over the map, all over the timetable, early Jurassic to late Cretaceous. They had Romanian Compies. Maybe they got their hands on Transylvanian mosquitoes, too."

"Tiny Cretaceous vampires," Billy said, and with the grin, he seemed more like himself again.

"Big Cretaceous azhdarchids." Alan gave himself a mental kick. That elongated neck? A Pteranodon? Maybe Isla Sorna was still too vivid in his mind, even after a year. "It's a lone adult, most probably a male, from the size of it. Do you think it could be what all those people saw? Just one animal?"

It seemed somehow disrespectful to call it an animal. Even "monster" had a more majestic sound to it.

Billy shook his head, absentmindedly wiping sweat from his brow. "I don't know. But if it's a lone male, it's either heading towards a singles' bar or a feeding place."

Alan didn't reply. At the first sign of a flock of female "Hatzegs" in breeding frenzy, he'd turn the car around. But if it was mating season, where were the rest of its species? Even a dozen other azhdarchids of that size couldn't have hidden anywhere without being noticed, and then it wouldn't just be a few rumors of a cryptid but San Diego all over again.

They were following the scenic route to Canyon de Chello, and Alan found himself constantly looking around, even if the lone flying figure wasn't hard to track at all. The sepia-colored rocks jutted out of the ground like a collection of a giant's building blocks, a structure left unfinished.

Billy had his head out of the window again. "It's circling now, preparing to touch down on a ledge of some kind. Not that high above us, over there. Looks like a mouth of a cave, maybe?"

The Hatzegopteryx's movements were even heavier than before. The trip seemed to have taken every last bit of its energy, and it landed clumsily, swan-like neck touching ground as it let out a cry that would've sounded pitiful if not for the volume of it.

Before Alan had managed to stop the car, Billy had already thrown the door open, that manic energy seeming to last. He was heading towards the rock wall with purpose in his stride. Alan hurried after him, muttering a curse under his breath, looking up at the rock ledge that seemed barely big enough for the Hatzegopteryx perching on it.

"Billy!" He tried to grab Billy's arm again, but Billy whipped around, dodging his attempt. There was a gleam to his eye; that was what made Alan not try again.

"Dr. Grant. Alan. Please. I have to do this." His voice was quiet and breathy, but the steely resolve was there, impossible to deny.

Feeling helpless, Alan let out a frustrated noise and looked up the rock wall. "I'm not a climber."

"I am." Billy handed him his backpack, his hand already reaching for a hold. "Catch me if I fall, yeah?"

With what, Alan wanted to yell, but it was no use. He'd seen that look before; he'd have to tie Billy down to stop him. This was something Billy had to do. Fine. He took a few steps backward, to see the ledge better. The azhdarchid cut a lonely figure, settling on its perch. What the hell was it doing here? It had flown with a definite purpose, but seemed uninterested in its surroundings, simply resting from the trip. He had to admit it scared him stiff: it was a huge animal, its jaw as long as Alan, its sinewy body the color of rusty metal with lighter tones in the crest. The most unnerving aspect was seeing it moving, as naturally as anything. Alan couldn't help thinking that it had no right to do that, to be so life-like. It was a theme park monster, not something from this world.

Billy apparently had no trouble with the cliff face, probably thanks to sheer willpower as well as skill. The Hatzegopteryx seemed to draw him in like a magnet. But there had been no azhdarchids on Isla Sorna...

The Hatzegopteryx turned its massive head, and Alan's heart jumped into his throat. Then it opened its jaws to let out a throaty honk, like a loud cough, and settled down again. If it had noticed Billy, it had apparently decided that there was nothing alarming, or even interesting, about the approaching primate. Alan noticed a jagged scar along its lower jaw; probably from a fight, but long healed. The whole animal was covered in tiny scrapes and scars, now that he looked at it. It was probably not just an adult but quite old. He wished he could see its bones, feel their smoothness.

Billy's hand grasped the edge of the perch, and with a grunt, he hauled himself up, taking a moment to catch his breath. He looked impossibly tiny next to the monstrous thing that utterly ignored him.

"Billy? Are you okay?" Alan asked, feeling anxious.

"I'm fine," came the answer, barely loud enough for him to hear.

Billy took a step closer to the Hatzegopteryx, carefully, not making a sound. It continued to stare at the opposing rock wall, seeming a little hunched, exhaustion showing in its posture and breathing. Then Billy reached out his hand and laid it on its heaving side, and it still ignored him, its eyes starting to close.

Alan looked past Billy. There did seem to be at least some kind of a cave, with a floor of jagged rock. He hastily focused his attention back on Billy, wanting every second to yell at him to come down. This was crazy, just asking for trouble. He thought he had learned better, but apparently not; history raised its ugly head again, and here they were poking at the monster instead of running.

Billy was slowly stroking the side of the Hatzegopteryx, like it was a horse that needed to calm down. He took a step closer, right to the edge of the perch, and after just a moment of hesitation, reached out to touch the giant head. His fingers brushed the scar on its jaw in another calming motion. The creature kept perfectly still, its eyes half-closed. It was a moment that Alan knew he would never forget: the young man and the monster, two creatures from different worlds, lit by the Arizona sun.

It didn't last. He saw Billy turn away, then take a deep breath before starting his descent, more hurried than his ascent, his movements clumsy. Alan didn't know what good it would do to try to break Billy's potential fall with his own head, but he stepped closer to the rock wall anyway, anxiously following Billy with his eyes. He was clearly upset, almost slipping a few times before his feet finally touched the ground. When they did, he turned wordlessly around and threw his arms around the surprised Alan, his hands clutching Alan's shirt like a lifeline. His whole frame was shaking with shock as he buried his head against the collar of Alan's shirt.

Alan was completely crap at comforting people. He was much better at shaking them, actually, because it tended to force people to think. He thrived when the weapon of choice was merciless logic; feelings were another species altogether, and verbalizing any of them didn't come naturally to him. What was more, he found he couldn't feel sorry for Billy, even as he put his arm around him in an attempt to calm him down. No, the feeling that swelled in his chest was _respect_. He was damn proud of Billy. Whatever had driven him to that ledge had been a test of character, and Billy had triumphed. The pterosaurs had taken something from him, and he had taken it back. He had touched the thunderbird.

"It came here to die." Billy's voice was muffled, and he was breathing in gasps, but he wasn't shaking as furiously anymore. "Behind it. I saw bones. Lots of them."

"Like an elephant graveyard," Alan murmured. It wasn't a perfect analogy. He'd need to run this by someone specializing in pterosaur behavior. Later. Now there was the rather more urgent issue of a favored grad student clinging to his shirt.

He ran his hand through Billy's hair, noting how it stuck to his skin with cold sweat. He waited for Billy to catch his breath, figuring that time was the best thing he could offer him. It wasn't so uncomfortable, actually, he mused. Billy seemed to respond pretty well to his attempts, relaxing one limb at a time.

Billy made a wet chortling sound against Alan's flannel shirt. "I thought for sure it'd kill me. I really did. Fuck, that was _terrifying_."

Alan sighed. His hand was still buried in Billy's hair. That seemed like a natural place for it. "Tell you what, the minute we see a bar, I'm buying you an Ice Pick."

Billy took a step back, but only a little one, lingering in Alan's personal space. He still looked vulnerable and shaken, but that smile was tugging back the sides of his mouth again, never too far away. That goddamn smile. Billy smiled like the world was in his pocket, won fair and square. "Only one? You want me to climb back up there and give it a big sloppy kiss, or what?"

Billy's smile was also notoriously contagious. Alan looked down and adjusted his hat, knowing it wouldn't fool Billy. "Fine. All the vodka in Holbrook." He almost added, _you damn well deserve it_, but swallowed the words and patted Billy's back instead. "C'mon."

When they walked back to the car, he glanced back at the ledge one more time. The curve of the old Hatzegopteryx's long neck looked almost graceful.

 

***

 

Alan ended up calling the university to cancel his lecture after the second round of vodka shots (the bartender had never even heard of an Ice Pick). It turned out it was just as well, as the professor had apparently been trying to reach him in order to cancel it anyway, due to the lack of interest. Normally, it would have gnawed at Alan to hear it, but he was in the company of his own species tonight and didn't feel extinction knocking. When he switched off his cell phone, Billy demanded that he try something called a Sin Slammer, getting louder with every vodka shot he had earned. Maybe they'd get to the jellyfish of Australia at some point, or maybe primates, but whichever way down evolution's path they traveled, Alan was glad of his company.


End file.
